Lost Art Press

If I wrote clickbait headlines, this one would be: “One Weird Trick to Really Understand Furniture Design.”

But I don’t. So instead, you’re getting some odd indie-rock lyric that works for me but does Jack Buddy for this blog’s SEO.

When I started working on “Campaign Furniture” more than a decade ago, I decided to create my own hand drawings for the book. My drawing process starts with tracing photos of originals, then modifying them in stages to show what’s important to me.

I thought I would some day advance past the “tracing” stage, but I found out something interesting about the tracing stage: It forces you to see things that your eye cannot. When you draw, your hands and eyes have to work together. But, unlike when I sketch, my hands appear to be more in control of the process when I’m tracing.

Put a different way, when I sketch freehand, my brain forces my hands to vomit out the contents of my brain. When I trace a photo, my hands force my brain to make sense of the lines and curves traveling up my arms.

Try it. Trace every detail you can see – not just the overall form. Cross-hatch the shadows. Try to make it something you would publish, which forces you to slow down. This process is in every way the opposite of sketching, which I try to do quickly (45 seconds or less at times).

After I finish a tracing (such as the stool above that I traced on Friday) I understand the seat shape and leg angles in a way that my eyes alone cannot. It’s a helpful technique with casework. With chairs, it’s invaluable. All of my recent chair designs began with tracings of pieces I like. And my deeper understanding of those chairs led to making my own original designs.

Congrats on reading this far; you’ve earned this cute animal video.

— Christopher Schwarz

Somehow amongst all the chaos of moving, my daughter Katherine managed to make a good-sized batch of soft wax. You can now pick up a jar from her etsy store.

This might be the last batch for a while. We are taking her to college next weekend. And her cooking apparatus was damaged in the move. So I need to get her cooking pot repaired. And Katherine needs to focus on being a college student first and a wax princess second.

She’s (amazingly) sold more than 1,000 jars of wax since she started cooking it in our basement in Fort Mitchell. Thanks to the profit she made, Katherine was able to buy her own smartphone, XBox and other consumer goods that stimulated the local economy.

So thanks for supporting her all these years.

I hope she is able to continue making wax once she is settled in at college, but I can’t make any promises.

— Christopher Schwarz

Pretty much every time we announce an event here at the storefront, people request that we stream it live on the web or create a video we can post on the blog or YouTube.

We don’t do this for a variety of reasons.

1. The storefront is a nightmare for audio recording. We have high ceilings and tons of hard surfaces. Even with good audio equipment (a TV station was here) and ideal conditions, the audio sucks.
2. We don’t have the equipment or people to do a good job. I am so picky about video. If we’re going to do video, it’s going to be a high-quality production. That means at least two cameras. So there will be some editing, which takes up time we don’t have.
3. I don’t want the videotaping to interfere with the actual live experience. People travel here from all over the world. Their visit here is tacked onto their vacations. Or they travel here specifically to come take a class or visit our open day. Real life is real important to me. I’d rather reach just a handful of people and do it well than reach a thousand people in a halfhearted way.
4. We have about 10 other projects that are a higher priority than streaming video from the shop. I know this means we are out of step with the rest of the world and all the videos on YouTube. But I’m OK with that.

So until I find a way that we can produce high-quality video (and audio) in a way that doesn’t gobble our time and doesn’t interfere with the people who traveled hundreds of miles to be here, I’m afraid the best way to visit here is to come here.

I know that not everyone can manage a trip – financially or time-wise. Sadly, we also can’t manage filming events – financially or time-wise.

— Christopher Schwarz